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That the circuit of the stars indicates definite events to
come but without being the cause direct of all that happens, has
been elsewhere affirmed, and proved by some modicum of argument:
but the subject demands more precise and detailed investigation
for to take the one view rather than the other is of no small
moment.
The belief is that the planets in their courses actually produce
not merely such conditions as poverty, wealth, health and
sickness but even ugliness and beauty and, gravest of all, vices
and virtue and the very acts that spring from these qualities,
the definite doings of each moment of virtue or vice. We are to
suppose the stars to be annoyed with men- and upon matters in
which men, moulded to what they are by the stars themselves, can
surely do them no wrong.
They will be distributing what pass for their good gifts, not out
of kindness towards the recipients but as they themselves are
affected pleasantly or disagreeably at the various points of
their course; so that they must be supposed to change their plans
as they stand at their zeniths or are declining.
More absurdly still, some of them are supposed to be malicious
and others to be helpful, and yet the evil stars will bestow
favours and the benevolent act harshly: further, their action
alters as they see each other or not, so that, after all, they
possess no definite nature but vary according to their angles of
aspect; a star is kindly when it sees one of its fellows but
changes at sight of another: and there is even a distinction to
be made in the seeing as it occurs in this figure or in that.
Lastly, all acting together, the fused influence is different
again from that of each single star, just as the blending of
distinct fluids gives a mixture unlike any of them.
Since these opinions and others of the same order are prevalent,
it will be well to examine them carefully one by one, beginning
with the fundamental question:
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